Wanderers Awheel in Malta
Photograph by F. W. Stone from European
From Producer to Middleman to Consumer
Door-to-door delivery in Valletta has its drawbacks. Goats sometimes acquire an infection which is
transmitted by their milk to humans. Origin of this disease, Malta fever, was discovered in 1887. Thirty
years later, a U. S . Department of Agriculture bacteriologist found that many cows were infected. More com
monly called "undulant fever," it is now world-wide and is acquired from unpasteurized milk of goats and cows.
three years' supply of grain lies stored in Flo
riana's subterranean vaults. Medieval castles
with rugged bastions have been refitted and
tunneled with secret fortifications.
Emergency submarine refuges and hidden
anchorages have been established in the sev
eral inlets in the islands. St. Paul's, Mellieha,
Salina, Madalena, St. Julian's, and St. Thomas
Bays are plotted for such use with micrometer
like accuracy.
We were personally conducted through many
of the defense works by British naval officers.
Others, which were secret, were of course
merely hinted at.
Afloat in the Grand Harbour, and ready
to slip into action upon a second's notice,
was half of Britain's Mediterranean naval
might.
Thus, today, because of its proximity to
Sicily, Malta wears a new and far more potent
coat of armor just as defiantly as when she
was held by her famous Knights. At present
the island is a Crown colony of the United
Kingdom.
Irrespective of the numerous regimes, the
Maltese people have remained basically Phoe
nician, with only slight traces of Italian, Greek,
and Arabic in their blood, and Latin and
Arabic in their language. Nearly 265,000 of
them live on the three islands-Comino, one
mile square; Gozo, 9 miles by 4 miles; and
Malta, 8 miles by 17 miles.
How this isolated, densely populated land
can support all its thrifty but good-humored
and startlingly prolific race has puzzled visi
tors for years. How do they live?
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